Yes, It's All Those Pop-Up Ads
Unfair Park's Robert Wilonsky passes on a story from Editor & Publisher that Web traffic has dropped 18% for The Dallas Morning News's Web site. Not good for a business that desperately needs to reinvent itself -- away from dead tree publisher to online content provider.
Wilonsky suggests, only half-jokingly, that the exodus is caused by pop-up ads. That's part of it, I'm sure. The News' home page is cluttered with ads; filled with redundant, confusing, navigation aids; littered with links to stories; but there's precious little to actually read on the home page.
After clicking and surfing for a while, you realize that the journalists at The Dallas Morning News have been gradually disappearing over the years, replaced by more and more wire service stories that you can get anywhere. There's no there, there.
Journalists who are left are trying to reinvent themselves as bloggers. The News has gone to blogs in a big way. The layout of the blogs had been a little cleaner than the home page, but they too have recently been made over to have all the clutter of the home page. And the blogs have been plagued by little bugs. Try to file a comment, click the preview button, then find that you cannot post from the preview screen. Reader comments are being automatically filtered into the moderators' spam folders. Sometimes the moderator just deletes them without notice. When they do show up, you have to really want to read them to find them. Reading the blogs becomes an endless chore of clicking on a blog to see the comments, clicking on your browser's "back" button to go back to the blog, clicking on another story to see its comment thread, and on and on. Blogs that have dozens of posts per day become too tiresome to read.
It seems that more and more, the only time I find myself reading something on the News Web site is when another local blog links to it. Not a good sign for the future of Dallas' only daily newspaper.
Who's To Blame For High Property Taxes?
Tom Pauken is whining again about property taxes. He led the governor's Task Force on Appraisal Reform last year, whose recommendations were largely ignored by the legislature for all sorts of reasons, mainly because they had nothing to do with appraisal reform and everything to do with messing with the free market and hamstringing local government in an effort to cut taxes. In fact, the one proposal aimed at ensuring accurate appraisals (sales disclosure) was sponsored by the legislator that Pauken attacks for obstructionism. Middle class houses tend to be fairly appraised already. It's the upper class homes that are typically undervalued. Yet Tom Pauken shows little interest in fair appraisals and a lot of interest in keeping appraisals of those upper class homes from being fairly appraised. For more information on this subject, search this blog for past stories on the subject.
Coincidentally, Dallas Business Journal reported today that Texas collected 9.5% more sales tax this November than it did a year ago. Do you see Tom Pauken complaining about this windfall for state and local governments? Do you see Tom Pauken lobbying for a cut in the state sales tax? No and no.
Why? Sales taxes tend to be regressive. The poor spend more of their income; the rich tend to save more. Sales taxes hit expenditures, not saving. Property taxes, on the other hand, tend to be progressive. The rich pay more because they tend to own more property and their houses tend to be bigger and more lavish. Tom Pauken's lobbying campaign for capping appraisal increases would have the effect of shifting more of the tax burden from the rich to the poor and middle class. He doesn't say that's his goal, but one has to believe that he's well aware of this result and would be happy with it. So, as long as Tom Pauken is whining, the average Texan has reason to be happy.
Sen. Coburn Threatens to Throw Himself into Traffic
Tom McGregor, of Dallas Blog, reports that Oklahoma's Republican Senator Tom Coburn "has threatened to throw himself into traffic to slow down the rush of legislative bills that are going through Capitol Hill right now."
First, voters should have no doubt about which party is to blame for this Congress not getting done what voters sent them to Washington to do. The Republicans are going to have to defend their obstruction of the people's will in November, 2008. Senator Tom Coburn is the poster child for the do-nothing Republicans.
Second, would Sen. Coburn throwing himself into traffic be such a bad thing?
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